Source: businesswire.com. Originally announced June 2020.
ActiveControl 8.3: What’s New
Basis Technologies, the company behind the ActiveControl DevOps and test automation platform for SAP, announced the release of ActiveControl 8.3 in June 2020. The release targets SAP teams looking to adopt agile, DevOps, and CI/CD practices within the traditionally rigid change management landscape of SAP environments.
Key themes in this release are tighter CI/CD toolchain integration, stronger support for SAP S/4HANA migration workflows, and improved code quality enforcement during development and approvals.
Jenkins Integration and abapGit Support
One of the headline additions in ActiveControl 8.3 is its first out-of-the-box, two-way integration with Jenkins, a widely-used open-source CI/CD automation server. This integration enables SAP development teams to incorporate ActiveControl into broader enterprise pipelines without custom scripting.
Critically, the Jenkins integration also enables the use of abapGit — an open-source Git client for SAP ABAP — within an end-to-end CI/CD workflow. abapGit allows ABAP source code to be managed in standard Git repositories, opening the door to version control, branching, and pull-request-style workflows that are common in non-SAP development but have historically been difficult to achieve in SAP landscapes.
When combined with ActiveControl’s existing automated analysis, deployment orchestration, and audit capabilities, an abapGit-based pipeline can support a more modern, flexible approach to SAP development. The Jenkins integration also enables automated test execution to be triggered from within the pipeline, with results registered back into ActiveControl for traceability.
Enhanced SAP S/4HANA Transition Support
Managing a migration to SAP S/4HANA while keeping existing ECC or ERP systems in production is a common challenge. ActiveControl has included “dual maintenance” automation since earlier versions — functionality designed to keep changes synchronized across both legacy and new-generation SAP systems simultaneously during a transition period.
Version 8.3 extends this with more powerful analysis capabilities and deeper integration with smartRetrofit from smartShift technologies. smartRetrofit assists in converting ABAP code to be compatible with S/4HANA. The tighter integration aims to reduce the cost and timeline of S/4HANA migrations by automating more of the analysis and remediation steps that would otherwise require manual effort.
ABAP Test Cockpit (ATC) Integration
ActiveControl 8.3 adds integration with SAP’s ABAP Test Cockpit (ATC), SAP’s built-in static analysis framework for ABAP code. ATC checks can now be automatically triggered from within an ActiveControl change and release workflow, rather than being run separately.
This integration is delivered as part of ActiveControl’s DevEnforcer function, which enforces quality gates during development and the approval process. With ATC included, teams can run code quality, security, and performance checks at the point where change objects are submitted — making it easier to catch issues early and enforce standards consistently across large, distributed SAP teams.
Other Notable Enhancements
- 60+ automated analyzers: Updates to ActiveControl’s built-in analyzer suite, which is designed to assess risk in SAP change objects before deployment.
- Web UI improvements: Additional functionality accessible via the browser-based interface, reducing reliance on SAP GUI for day-to-day change management tasks.
- Governance, audit, and compliance: A range of enhancements supporting the documentation, approval workflow, and audit trail requirements common in regulated industries using SAP.
ActiveControl in Context: The Basis Technologies Platform
ActiveControl is one of two main products in the Basis Technologies portfolio. The other is Testimony, described by the company as an automated SAP regression testing solution that does not require pre-written test scripts or ongoing test maintenance — instead generating regression tests from recorded system activity.
ActiveControl holds SAP certification for use on both SAP NetWeaver and SAP S/4HANA.
Why This Matters for SAP DevOps Teams
SAP landscapes have historically lagged behind cloud-native environments in adopting modern DevOps practices. The combination of complex transport management, compliance requirements, and the absence of native Git integration in traditional ABAP development has made CI/CD adoption difficult. Tools like ActiveControl, and specifically the move to integrate with Jenkins and abapGit, represent a meaningful step toward closing that gap — enabling SAP teams to participate in the same automated pipeline patterns used elsewhere in the enterprise.
For organizations mid-migration to S/4HANA, the dual-maintenance automation and smartRetrofit integration address one of the most operationally difficult phases: keeping two parallel system landscapes in sync while delivering ongoing business change.
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